[Air-L] New Book: Digital Fandom: New Media Studies

[Paul Booth]

Hi all,

Apologies for the self promotion, but I wanted to announce the
publication of my Digital Fandom: New Media Studies, in Peter Lang's
Digital Formations series (edited by Steve Jones). Here's the blurb
from the back of the book:

"This book re-evaluates the way we examine todays digital media
environment. By looking at how popular culture uses different digital
technologies, Digital Fandom bolsters contemporary media theory by
introducing new methods of analysis. Using the exemplars of alternate
reality gaming and fan studies, this book takes into account a
particular philosophy of playfulness in todays media in order to
establish a new media studies. Digital Fandom augments traditional
studies of popular media fandom with descriptions of the contemporary
fan in a converged media environment. The book shows how changes in
the study of fandom can be applied in a larger scale to the study of
new media in general, and formulates new conceptions of traditional
media theories."

Specifically, the book examines Alternate Reality Gaming, blogs,
wikis, and social network sites through the lens of fandom, and  would
be useful for classes in media studies, fandom, and issues of
convergence and transmediation.

For more information, you can check out a blog interview Henry Jenkins
ran with me, here:
http://henryjenkins.org/2010/08/args_fandom_and_the_digi-grati.

"From blogs to ARGS, wikis to social networking sites, Paul Booth
provides to digital in-depth tour of how fans straddle and traverse
the boundary between television and media. With a theoretically rich
analytic eye, 'Digital Fandom' breaks new ground for the next
generation of media scholarship. "(Jason Mittell, Middlebury College,
Author of 'Television & American Culture')

"In this Web 2.0 world, where content is king and not community, the
fan marks a new form of interactive subjectivity that deconstructs the
usual categories of consumer and producer. Paul Booth's' Digital
Fandom 'breaks new ground in the investigation of this subject,
demonstrating how it reorganize and reorient the field of new media
studies. "(David J. Gunkel, Presidential Teaching Professor, Northern
Illinois University, Author of' Hacking Cyberspace and Thinking
Otherwise ')

Feel free to write with any questions,

Cheers,
Paul Booth

Paul Booth
Assistant Professor
College of Communication
DePaul University
1 E. Jackson
Chicago, IL 60604
312-362-7753